48 International The EconomistMay 16th 2020
2 the authorities in Germany’s most popu-
lous region, North Rhine-Westphalia, to
part with €2.4m ($2.6m). The money was a
down-payment for 10m masks. More than
50 vehicles were lined up to import the fic-
titious masks from the Netherlands before
the ruse was discovered. It involved a web-
site registered in Spain, an intermediary in
Ireland and a firm in the Netherlands with
a website that turned out to have been
cloned by the scammers. With the help of
financial institutions in three countries,
investigators managed to block the pay-
ments, including €500,000 on its way to
Nigeria.Making out like (masked) bandits
That attempted sting reflects an explosion
in cybercrime since the lockdowns began.
On the night of March 12th the Czech Re-
public’s second-largest hospital, the Uni-
versity Hospital in Brno, was hit by a ran-
somware attack (in which the target is
prevented from accessing files until a pay-
ment is made). Urgent surgical operations
had to be postponed and patients redirect-
ed to other hospitals. Several other medical
facilities have experienced similar attacks
since the start of the covid-19 emergency,
according to Interpol.
But more traditional organised crimi-
nal activities have been hampered by the
lockdowns. Protection rackets, prostitu-
tion rings, illegal gambling and the drugs
trade all depend on people being able to
move around freely. So do imprisoned
bosses of organised crime groups if they
are to continue to control their businesses.
This is a particular challenge for the Brazil-
ian drugs gangs, many of whose leaders are
jailed. Lincoln Gakiya, a prosecutor for the
state of São Paulo, says visiting family
members often convey notes and informa-
tion. Now incarcerated bosses have to rely
on infrequent appearances by their lawyers
to communicate with their subordinates.
Extortion provides many criminal
groups with a regular flow of cash. It is es-
pecially important to the street gangs, or
maras, of Central America. But collecting
cash during a pandemic is tricky. Data
quoted by the Global Initiative against
Transnational Organised Crime comparing
March 2020 with the same month last year
showed 9% and 17% falls in extortion inci-
dents registered by police in Guatemala
and El Salvador (though most are not re-
ported). In Honduras the decline was 80%.
According to the fnamp, an anti-gang unit
in the country, Honduran gang leaders
have warned transport firms that once the
quarantine ends, protection money will
have to be paid retrospectively.
The biggest money-spinner for most or-
ganised crooks is the drugs trade. Mr Stock
says early reports suggest the global busi-
ness, estimated at around $500bn, has
been disrupted—but only temporarily andpartially. “For many cartels and syndicates
it’s not a big problem”, he explains, “be-
cause of the money that is available at that
level. They have immense liquidity.”
The opium harvest in Afghanistan that
supplies nearly all the world’s heroin has
been largely unaffected. Coca farmers in
Colombia, the world’s largest cultivator,
have just had their best year on record,
though in Peru a shortage of imported
chemical precursors has made it harder to
produce cocaine. The closure of pharma-
ceutical plants in China threatened the
supply of precursors used in the produc-
tion of methamphetamines, but the inter-
ruption was temporary.
The next stage in the supply chain—
wholesale distribution—has been distort-
ed. But gangs are already adapting. Syndi-
cates that rely on drugs smuggled on
flights, such as Nigerian gangs in South Af-
rica, have been hit hard. Two members of
Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel told Reuters that far
fewer drugs are being transported in cars
across the border into the United States
since it was shut on March 21st. Syndicates
seem to be using tunnels and drones in-
stead. Officials in Brazil have reported that
traffickers in cocaine, which enters from
Colombia and Peru on its way to Europe
and Africa, are switching consignments
from land routes and onto boats travelling
down the Amazon. With maritime and air
traffic greatly diminished, it is even harder
to get drugs out of Brazil. Yet seizures be-
tween February and April were up by 10%.
Elvis Secco of the Brazilian Federal Police’s
drugs and organised crime unit says traf-
fickers are offloading their stockpiles and
taking more risks, which partly explains
why more narcotics are being impounded.
Cocaine prices in Europe and America
have risen accordingly. But that also re-flects the difficulties of retail distribution,
the link in the supply chain that has prob-
ably had to be adjusted most. In Naples last
month police dogs found 89 packages
stuffed with narcotics waiting to be dis-
patched from a courier depot. The drugs
had been ordered on the darknet. The cou-
rier firm had no idea of its role.
Shortly afterwards Interpol told its 194
members that drug-dealers were also using
the cover of food deliveries to sell their
wares. In Ireland police found 8kg of co-
caine and two handguns hidden in pizza
boxes. In the Cape Flats, a sprawl of town-
ships on the outskirts of Cape Town, gangs
are delivering drugs along with food par-
cels. Heroin prices there rose initially be-
cause of a mix of profiteering and new de-
livery fees (they have now returned to
normal). In Lesotho getting heroin direct to
your door costs 200-500 rand ($11-27), on
top of the usual 1,200 rand per gram.
The Cape Town gangs are among several
around the world that are making a big
show of charity during the pandemic. Mob-
sters have been reported delivering food to
the needy in Mexico and Italy. In El Salva-
dor and Brazil they have enforced curfews.
In Japan yakuzahave offered to disinfect a
quarantined cruise liner.
But even where such initiatives are not
used as a cover for drug peddling, their ef-
fects are anything but benign. They en-
hance gangsters’ popularity and image as
latter-day Robin Hoods. They guarantee fu-
ture votes for the politicians whom mob-
sters sponsor. And they realise one of the
fundamental aims of a true mafia: delegiti-
mising the state by displacing official au-
thority. A gang that enforces a lockdown is
doing the job of the police; one that distrib-
utes food to the destitute, that of govern-
ment welfare bodies.
A deep or prolonged depression will
open up rich opportunities for crooks in at
least three areas. High unemployment will
make it easier for mobsters to recruit peo-
ple. Government recovery schemes will
give them a chance to muscle in on juicy
public contracts. And lower corporate pro-
fits will make it easier for mafias to take
over businesses that can then be used to
launder illicit gains.
In Italy, after the financial crisis, some
firms accepted loans at below-market rates
in return for taking onto the books—or the
board—a mafiosowho then began to give
the orders. According to the chief of the
Italian police, Franco Gabrielli, his officers
in the regions worst hit by covid-19 have al-
ready come across men carrying cash-
stuffed briefcases that may be part of the
Italian mafias’ version of “helicopter mon-
ey”. The risk is that politicians already
struggling to cope with the effects of the
pandemic will shove its implications for
the underworld to the back of their minds
and the bottom of their agendas. 7